Sam Broner
2.5K posts
@SamBroner
Generally Happy. Investor @ a16z crypto | prev: MIT, Fluid Framework, Distributed Systems @Microsoft
Must read - The Intention Layer from @sytaylor. Simon writes many great things. This is a Top 5 all time. He explains Stripes new Machine Payments Protocol (MPP). Where AP2 was focus on Agents acting on behalf of a human, MPP are agents exchanging value with other agents. A whole new economy that doesn't exist today, with Stripe and Visa at the heart of these micro payments. fintechbrainfood.com/p/the-intentio…. I'm also writing a blog today on the topic. This is a great place to focus Stripe's new Tempo network, and their stablecoin assets. This will be a major success, and a revolutionary change to the infrastructure of the internet. Or as Simon says from the Attention Economy to the Intention Economy.
Some users who have scheduled tasks in Cowork or Code are experiencing an issue with the Claude desktop app being unresponsive this morning. We have an active incident open and are investigating. status.claude.com
Of course that’s your contention. You just got done reading the Citrini piece, prob’ly, “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” and so naturally that’s what you believe now. You saw Visa and Mastercard drop five percent in a single session and you thought, the card networks are dead, stablecoins win, agents will route around interchange. You’re quoting stablecoin transfer volumes against Visa’s throughput like that comparison means anything. That’ll last until next week when you discover Sam Broner’s @SamBroner “Tourists in the Bazaar” on the a16z blog and suddenly you’re not a markets guy, you’re a thesis guy. You’ll start talking about how agents behave like local merchants, not tourists, and how stablecoins capture the whole B2B layer because credit cards are a “bundled product” and the three percent fee “is not for the payment part.” You’ll be saying things like “payments are sticky” and “new relationships built on stablecoins become old relationships still built on stablecoins” like you came up with that yourself. After that you’ll read Noah Levine’s @nlevine19 article and you’ll pivot again. Now you’re nuanced. Now you’re saying cards win for existing merchants but stablecoins serve the ones that processors can’t underwrite yet. You’ll start talking about vibe coders and the “gap” and how the real opportunity isn’t replacing Visa, it’s the merchants that don’t exist yet. Then you’ll find Simon Taylor’s @sytaylor Fintech Brainfood take and complete the cycle. Now it’s “cards and stablecoins, not cards or stablecoins.” Now you’re drawing little diagrams with master agents and sub-wallets on cocktail napkins. You’ll tell people stablecoins are Fedwire for the internet like that was always your position.
